Tuesday, October 22, 2013

I got into making panoramas a long time before most people. I still miss my QTVR Authoring Studio software that Apple did not support well. I miss my precision engineered 0-360 degree OneShot lens (accidentally broken along with a Nikon camera at Christmas 2008).

Yet over time the ability of cell phone cameras and software to enable me (and millions of others) to take panoramas made up for that. I really appreciate the camera and photography capabilities of my WindowsPhone Lumia 1020, but alas it's panorama stitching capabilities do not handle handheld photography (standing in one spot turning taking dozens of photos while trying to keep the camera location fixed) well at all.

This becomes sadly apparent in beach/horizon photos, among my favorite subjects. Often the horizon will appear as a square waveform if even one picture is processed by the software a few pixels above where it should be.

I do appreciate my iPhone 4S camera app for its ability to fairly seamlessly stitch together a panorama, but it is not a full 360 degrees. Some other apps do offer good options though.

So, in this particular case, the stunning colors of the sky on Fire above the beach at my home on Long Island (left of the photo) and the glowing red horizon showing Fire Island (and a near full moon on the right of the picture) were due to the awesome camera on the WindowsPhone Lumia. But, I did have to manually cut/move/paste some of the horizon parts to make them straight, in Photoshop.

It took effort to make the horizon (almost) straight since I am not a Photoshop guru. Nor do I have the time to compensate for the fact that these were all taken standing on sloping sand turning around in a full circle. Making the horizon a perfect straight line on both sides to align on the left and right is something I would love to do (and process this photo into a pixel accurately aligned real Quicktime virtual reality immersive experience) but alas, lack of time means I can only share the magic of this moment in a straight flat but, you will agree, stunning image.

Here's to software getting better faster than any hopes of my photography skills!

Sunday, October 20, 2013

SOOC Image Straight Out Of Camera!! NO photo editing, tweaking, or processing of ANY kind on this 41MP Nokia Cellphone photo. Only added my name in Photoshop & saved image as JPG.

As I was driving home from lunch recently during my 3 weeks stay at my home in Long Island, New York, I did a quick (but safe) U-turn on South Country Road to catch this photo from one of the few trees like this that still had leaves on them.

This year it seemed like the season changed rather quickly. With all of God's blessings, even as I Look Up, Fall (Coming) Down all around is what I see.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

As the cold air starts to creep in from the North, the sun starts to slide to set more over the water than land on the South Shore of Long Island, New York. The moisture squeezed out of the air also makes for crisper cooler air to breathe in but also for sharper photographs. Dusk scene at my blessed home beach in NY, taken with my new WindowsPhone Lumia 1020.

Now that is what I call Microsoft Office AND Microsoft Windows. It is a good thing I do not have to visit the Microsoft office in Southwest Florida regularly. With windows offering a 270 degrees waterview like this -- combining my loves for boating/waterfront living and flying {as jets come in to land right across the bay) -- I'd get nothing done! Two handheld photos I took with my WindowsPhone Lumia 1020, merged in Microsoft ICE and titled in Photoshop.